Some of you might remember her as the DA writer who was getting a ton of hate after she said she wasn't all that interested in combat in games, and somehow the raving idiots took that to mean "I am personally responsible for every single feature you don't like about DA2 and I want all straight male gamers to be raped by men in video games."

Well she left BioWare to go freelance this week, after EA security officials showed her a small sample of the hate she's been getting on the forums since DA:I. She was already aware of the type of harassing phone calls and emails she was getting, but this was allegedly the last straw. And I'm not surprised. Because apparently many of these were graphic narratives about the ways they'd go after her family; for instance, descriptive ways they'd murder her children on their way home from school, so that they wouldn't have to live with the shame of not being aborted by her.

I'm not even sure I understand how you could say that to someone in the first place and not instantly die of shame.

I mean, that goes well past the typical kind of nastiness you expect from public, anonymous settings. And I'm sure that's just a sampling. Freaking people.

In case anyone was wondering, Hepler was responsible for the Dwarven plot lines and writing for DA:O. I believe she handled at least one romance in DA2. Ironically, I'm fairly certain that was not Anders' plot line (contrary to what all the homophobic idiots blather about).

I'm just disgusted and need to rant about how much I sometimes hate fandom.

[EDIT]

My original source. I've been seeing people saying she left because she's working on a book, not because of the harassment, and that the death threats and such just came up in an interview about her leaving (and she described many of them more fully).

Either way, I don't care. Whether or not they drove her out of the job doesn't really make it better or worse.

Because apparently many of these were graphic narratives about the ways they'd go after her family; for instance, descriptive ways they'd murder her children on their way home from school, so that they wouldn't have to live with the shame of not being aborted by her.

I'm not even sure I understand how you could say that to someone in the first place and not instantly die of shame.

I mean, that goes well past the typical kind of nastiness you expect from public, anonymous settings.

Seems pretty average to me.

____________________________

George Carlin wrote:

I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

I'm just disgusted and need to rant about how much I sometimes hate fandom people.

It's okay we're all in the same boat.

This latest surge to hold people accountable for mean stuff they post online has caught my interest though. Given the success people have had taming bad behavior on the roadways I only see good things in the future.

Yeah, and the reality is that very few of these people would even know the first thing about actually hiding their internet identity, so between possible legal changes, and the fact that sites are tired of this being associated with them, it does look like the grossest cases will disappear.

Maybe the homicidal helps cancel out that improved birth rates. Besides if video games made people dumber you'd expect gamers to have more kids than the average person; so much for the 'virgin living in the parent's basement' stereotype.

Jennifer Hepler left BioWare this week to begin work on a book about narrative design and do some freelance work. Her most recent job title was senior writer on Dragon Age: Inquisition. But it was Dragon Age 2 that led to the death threats, the threats against her family and children and the harassment.

When asked if the harassment led to her depature, Hepler told Polygon "No, leaving Bioware was for family reasons. I am going to be working on a text book on narrative design among other game-related freelance projects."

After Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011, Hepler told Polygon, many of the people involved in the game's development received angry emails, abusive forum posts and petitions calling for them to be fired. About that time, someone dug up an old interview Hepler participated in six years earlier. In the interview Hepler mentioned that her least favorite part of working in the game industry was playing through games and combat. Some of the interview was put in the official forums as evidence that Hepler was to blame for changes in the game's combat. The forum post was removed and Hepler went on maternity leave. But then the following February someone created a forum post resurfacing the interview and called Hepler the "cancer" that was destroying BioWare. "I had opened a Twitter account a few weeks before that, and this poster or others quickly found me there and began sending threatening messages," she said. "I shut my account down without reading them, so I'm not certain what they said, but other people have told me they were quite vile."

The forum post and Hepler's initial response on Twitter, ignited a firestorm of hatred and harassment that included emailed death threats and threats against her children.

"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," Hepler said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."

Hepler also received harassing phone calls and threats on the BioWare Social Network.

The impact though, she said, was mostly positive.

"The outpouring of support I received — large amounts from female and *** fans — was incredibly heartening," she said. "I got hundreds of messages from people who had been deeply moved by characters and scenes that I wrote and who had made positive changes in their real lives because of it. Without the negativity, I'm not sure that I would ever have heard from all of these people confirming that there is a need for characters that tackle touchy social issues, for characters who are untraditional or even unlikeable. It has definitely strengthened my desire to continue to make games that strive for inclusivity and that use fiction and fantasy to explore difficult, uncomfortable real-world issues."